I am writing a story and it has to do with a crisis happening in the USA. In a previous thread I asked for (and received in spades) info regarding what would happen if none of the employees of our power grid showed up for work.

So now I am looking for info on the "Internet Kill Switch"

OK so let's say there is an actual emergency where the President needs to shut the Internet off in the USA.

For purposes of this research subject it doesn't matter if he has legal or moral authority to do so only that if he can actually do it even without an actual law written and passed giving him legal authority to do so.

Now I would gather power to routers located in the US would need shut off. Also maybe the cooperation of the US based ISPs to shut down their systems. Would that do it and does anyone know the details about the major routers located in the USA.

I know there are lots of knowledgeable Internet savvy Freepers who must know a thing or two about the possibilities of such a situation. Thanks in advance.

Firstly, the President already has the power to control all forms of communications by virtue of the Communications Act of 1934. The best suggestion I’d have for you is to do a little research on BGP - Border Gateway Protocol. What BGP does is advertise the local IP address prefixes of backbone providers (e.g. Quest, AT&T, etc) to neighboring networks. Big ISPs propagate the address IDs of their customers (e.g local ISPs who buy their bandwidth from them) to their neighbors so that eventually all ISPs know all other ISPs prefixes. This enables routers to know where to send packets with a given destination address.

The “Kill Switch” would basically remove US-based IP addresses from the routing tables of BGP routers around the world. This means that routers no longer know where to send packets addressed to US IP addresses  even though all the physical connections are still intact.

I think an interesting plot twist would be the “what if” - what if one smart techie finds a way to open a pathway, maybe through HF radio or some older wireline link that isn’t monitored. Even if it were slow, he’d be like the one-eyed man in a land of the blind...

Keep in mind that you can never actually kill the internet unless it’s done globally. In order to do so you’d have to kill international phone service as well as several forms of more difficult to control wireless communication.

Cuba failed to keep the internet completely out, and China has failed on numerous occasions to censor information over the internet. Somebody, somewhere in the country has the location and equipment necessary to get the information.

He might be able to cause disruptions in the USSA, but
I doubt that he could kill it.
It would be like shutting down the telephone network.
Since I have not been in the states since 2004, I am not loosing sleep over it, but I would miss FR.

It is a very interesting and timely topic, especially with the newest vague threat from Anonymous, about an Internet blackout for March 31st of this year.

What is a ‘kill switch’ and how would it be implemented? First, you have to look at the mindset of the people involved - mostly government drones who honestly know nothing about what they're talking about. A few thousand Al Gores.

For an international attack, the point of a kill switch would be to isolate the United States internet from an external attack - say something by a hacking group on March 31st. Taking aside the smaller links, the largest submarine cable links are in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami Florida. Shutting down those links would effectively cripple and disable any international internet traffic. And the protocol that would come to the mind of the Al Gores would be to..unplug the damn thing.

But what about a domestic infiltration? A gigantic cascading worm that has found a particularly huge vulnerability in a certain operating system? You shut down the domain name servers, that which turns www.freerepublic.com into 209.157.64.200, the IP address. The great thing about that is that everything you want to keep working, you just have them reference the proper address and it reaches a working domain name server.

Because attacking the physical infrastructure of the domestic internet is next to useless. Sure, there's some great target rich environments, you could slow it down. But at the same time you cut off a whole lot of things you want to work. And to keep that working, you'd have to install a completely separate internet, and that gets really expensive, really fast.

And the last most likely vector would be turning off data service for cell phones. It probably wasn't in the plan in the first place, but recent outages likely have woken the Al Gores into going ‘hey, we should be able to do that.’ And unlike internet service providers, there really only a few players in the game of wireless data service for cell phones, so putting that into motion would be relatively painless.

So, international connectivity, domestic name service and wireless data service - those are going to be your most likely ‘kill switches’ for the government to go after the ability to control.

19
posted on 03/24/2012 11:28:53 PM PDT
by kingu
(Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)

“If you dont mind my asking, on what continent are you?”
______________________________________________

I started my international living in central Europe, but I am now in the Philippines, where I will spend the rest of my life, except for a few exploratory trips.
I have no desire or interest in even visiting the USSA now.
I do, however, have a daughter back in Tennessee, and two brothers in Paris/San Francisco.

Bunch of on-line businesses (and those that use on-line to supplement) would take a hit - more food stamp “patrons”?
The military is pretty much tied to the internet for doing its business too - no longer maintains all the dedicated, separated physical lines it used to. It would probably cut down on a lot of day-to-day business for our warriors that weren’t in the elite loop of whatever comm systems were being used to maintain ability for messaging.

22
posted on 03/25/2012 5:14:59 AM PDT
by trebb
("If a man will not work, he should not eat" From 2 Thes 3)

"Bunch of on-line businesses (and those that use on-line to supplement) would take a hit - more food stamp patrons? The military is pretty much tied to the internet for doing its business too - no longer maintains all the dedicated, separated physical lines it used to. It would probably cut down on a lot of day-to-day business for our warriors that werent in the elite loop of whatever comm systems were being used to maintain ability for messaging."

Know this trebb, I am not doubting a word you have posted but I find it very interesting there is a Bill in the Senate that seeks to give the POTUS the so-called "Internet Kill Switch" which if what you say is true can shut off some of the communications of our military...!!!

Such begs the question: "What sort of scenario would have to be in effect for the POTUS to shut down the Internet which would cut off a goodly portion of our Military and I would gather our first responders communication capabilities?!?!?"

Most day-to-day business is run over what is known as the NIPRNET - a military-dedicated internet that actually rides the regular internet. I suppose it’s possible to keep it functioning if they decide to cut the average citizen from access, but there are bound to be problems. Most military rides over the regular internet with varying levels of encryption. There are bound to be dedicated satellite and other dedicated hard lines, to keep command and control and warfighting commanders connected, but it is doubtful that many would be able to conduct business as usual - just as in any modern company, the military is highly leveraged in networking. I don’t have the technicl expertise to know everything about it, but have to assume that there wouild be a fairly major disruption.

24
posted on 03/25/2012 7:51:15 AM PDT
by trebb
("If a man will not work, he should not eat" From 2 Thes 3)

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